Chabad houses serve as a kind of Israeli embassies throughout the world and the government should allocate a budget for them accordingly and take responsibility for securing them, the Chief Rabbinate Council declared on Monday in the aftermath of theMumbai terror attacks.

The writer is a Latina Orthodox Jewish convert,freelancewriter, educator and blogger. Currently working on a memoir about her conversion, she lives in New York with her husband, who is pursuing rabbinical ordination.

As I nodded, I thought not of myself but of all the prospective converts who have been scared away by the latest news in Orthodox conversion. While I hadn't acted as they did, I understood them.

Isn't all this news just a slap in the face to all converts? A sign that they'll never be truly accepted among the chosen people?

I started theHalf-Jewish Networkon Sept. 22, 2005, because the adult children and other descendants of intermarriage need the same resources that are available for interfaith couples: advocacy organizations, literature and Jewish outreach.

Speaking to the Bnei Menashe here in Kangpopki, I am told something that I didn't fully grasp before, but which is quite startling:Allof the Kuki in Northeast India - as well as elements of the tribe in neighboringMyanmar, totaling some three million people - are considered, by the two men who had thevisionsand by the current leadership, to be Bnei Menashe.

So even though only a tiny minority of the Kuki tribe have embraced Judaism and want to make aliya, they are all potential Jewish converts and Israeli citizens. All three million of them.

TheHigh Courtof Justice will hold a hearing on apetitionThursday that could have ramifications for 20,000 Russians whose Jewish status is being questioned by the State of Israel.

Lubov Gonchareva, 48, a member of the "Subbotnik" community in Vysoky, southwest Russia, has been denied the right to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return by the Interior Ministry.

The Ministry refused Gonchareva's request despite the fact that her mother was permitted to immigrate under the Law of Return and was recognized by a Chief Rabbinate Rabbinical Court as a full-fledged Jew.

Twenty years ago today, on December 1, 1998, for the first time in history, 70 Jewish women prayed together out loud as a group at the Western Wall (or "Kotel") in Jerusalem

…Two films have already been made about this struggle.

The most recent film, by Yael Katzir, a secular Tel Avivian and a professor of film, is a powerful, haunting, soulful, heartbreaking, and enraging film.

It is called "Praying in her own Voice." You may both read about it and order ithereand see clips of ithere.

…Katzir's film now includes opening comments from prominent American woman rabbis but it also includes deeper portraits of Women of the Wall's core of long-timers: Danielle Bernstein, Batya Cohn-Kallus, Anat Hoffman, Rahel Jaskow, Haviva Ner-David, Peggy Cidor, and lawyer Frances Raday at their most heroic.

The Jewish world lost a gem last week. Dr. Aryeh Geiger, founder of the pioneering Reut School in Jerusalem, founder of Ometz Hinuchi for principal independence, creator of the Gidonim project for the renewal of Eastern European Jewish cemeteries, died last week after a long and uphill battle with cancer.

But his long list of amazing achievements does not capture what made him truly great. His greatness was who he was as a person.

Aryeh Geiger embodied kindness and care as an entire world view. He built relationships and institutions on the same principle of spirituality as human connection.

He never veered from these unwavering beliefs, and dedicated every ounce of his life to transmitting this love for humankind.

…The ultra-Orthodox are no one's enemy. They are a part of our people, and Jerusalem belongs to them just as it belongs to the rest of us.

At the same time, however, they can no longer be allowed to be the sole carriers of Jerusalem's soul, culture, and aspirations.

Jerusalem must be a divided city - divided among all aspects and ideologies of Israeli society, for only as a divided city can it be united as the capital of all Israelis. Jerusalem must be a safe city - safe for all expressions of Jewishness.

"Everyone thought we were crazy anyway, so we gave them another reason to think so," says Leah Shakdiel, who rocked the country in 1987.

She petitioned the High Court of Justice to force then-minister of religious affairs Zevulun Hammer to approve a list of candidates for the Yeruham religious council on which her name appeared.

Hammer never dreamed that he would find himself locked in a ferocious battle with an ultra-Orthodox woman, which would cast a shadow over his public career and threaten his standing in the National Religious Party.

Israel today is the most important Jewish laboratory for the dynamic between Jewish religiousness and secularism, because in Israel Jewish secularism is possible, and it is amid this secularism that the most important Jewish spiritual creation of the past 100 years has arisen.

Those accustomed to speaking of the emptiness of Israeli secularism ought to take a moment to see what a profound lesson it has to teach Jewish religiousness.

Born into an ultra-Orthodox household 49 years ago, Chana Goldberg has moved toward the religious center and has been struggling through her art for close to two decades to point out the inequalities of the sexes in her native milieu.

Being a woman makes her task all the more of an uphill struggle.

"I believe I am the only professional frum-from-birth female artist in the city," she says, using the Yiddish word for observant.

…Returning to Jerusalem in 1996, Goldberg began to expand on the themes nurtured at Tyler, including controversial scenes of motherhood, like her "Last Supper," which was first shown in a 1999 group exhibition for new members at the Jerusalem's Artists House.

…At the time of the 1999 exhibition, Goldberg was teaching art at a religious high school in Jerusalem.

When a supervisor from the Ministry of Education for the religious schools saw her paintings at the Artists House, she gave Goldberg an ultimatum: either remove her works from the exhibit or lose her job. Goldberg chose the latter and quit.

Shas is trying to have its cake and eat it too: to deride the fundamental values of a state education while setting its sights on the Education Ministry.

While Shas leaders claim that their constituency is loyal to the state and its sons serve in the Israel Defense Forces, their education system, which is funded by state subsidies, aims to insulate its children from symbols of the state while teaching them to scorn the core-curriculum subjects that are the backbone of the state education system.

One ought not be moved by Rabbi Yosef's sermons, and handing the education portfolio over to Shas should be looked at as a fleeting election joke.

Teacher responds to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who referred to secular teachers as ‘asses’

A [gaon] genius says that soldiers died on duty because they failed to pray and lay tefillin. Meanwhile, the ass explains to his students the importance of defending the homeland while observing the verse commanding us to guard our souls.

While the Jews in America and other communities have been grappling for decades with the question of how to define a Jewish identity that is not tied down only to religion, secular Israelis simply don't have that problem.

Sure, many of them lack a lot of Jewish knowledge and they certainly are not very aware of the Jewish world outside Israel.

But they're not very bothered about it, because for them every moment in Israel is passed within a Hebrew speaking Jewish environment.

Officials at the Jewish Agency for Israel are saying a $40.5 million budget cut and a radical restructuring ultimately will provide a major boost to its campaign to reorganize and expand its efforts beyond aliyah.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today. Hislatest book isLeading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.

Non-religious Israeli Judaism is different than non-religious American Judaism - but in so many ways more substantive, rooted, integrated, learned.

Moreover, while too many secular Israeli Jews are too distant from traditional Judaism, these contemptuous remarks ignore the Jewish renaissance taking place among non-religious Israeli Jews.

When he next visits Israel on his movement's tab, this leader should visit the Shalom Hartman Institute…the Hebrew Union College…the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem…the TALI Education Fund…

Contributions received in Israel from American Jewry make up a significant part of the income for Israel's third sector - estimated at 19 percent of the third sector's income - amounting to approximately US$1.5 billion per year.

Michael B. Oren is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center and a contributing editor ofAZURE.

Adam Sandler's hit comedy reflects a deep divide between Israeli and American Jews.

The choices made by their protagonists thus, to a great extent, reflect the gulf between Israeli and American Jewry over which community best guarantees Jewish survival—physical as well as spiritual—in a precarious, secular age.

Which polity, these misleadingly superficial films ask, constitutes the sole Jewish utopia, the State of Israel or the United States? Which is the real Promised Land?

Such questions, of course, are as old as Zionism itself.

…In its own naive way, the film tries to bridge the gap that divides Israelis and Palestinians.

But at the same time, it only accentuates the gap separating Israelis from American Jews.

Regrettably, the chasm still yawns between these conflicting utopias, between contrasting dreams of national and personal freedom and disparate formulas for Jewish survival.

Following the decision to unite the National Religious Party and the National Union into one party called Habayit Hayehudi (The Jewish Home), some interesting changes are also taking place on the city council.

Instead of the four seats the NRP held on the outgoing city council, Habayit Hayehudi will have only three…

Regarding the issue of education, Rabbi Dr. Micha Goodman, head of the Ein Prat Academyfor Leadership and research fellow at the Hartman Institute, believes that the best thing for Jewish Zionist education is precisely for the [education] portfolio not to be held by a religious city councillor.

"Without expressing a political point of view regarding the NRP or Habayit Hayehudi, I am convinced that Jewish Zionist education doesn't have to be a matter for religious Zionists.

Regarding the role of this new political party, I would say that with all due respect, Judaism belongs to us all, observant and non-observant; it is not a matter of 'dati'im.'

A previously unknown religious organization has jumped into the electoral fray in Safed, urging people to vote for incumbent Mayor Yishai Maimon in today's run-off by claiming that he will help bring the Messiah.

Maimon is contending against Ilan Shochat, who outpolled him in the first round of voting on November 11.

The organization, called Lovers of God in the Holy Community of Safed, published a manifesto saying that voters have the power "to advance the coming of the Messiah" by reelecting Maimon, as his election "will enable us to end all the abominations, desecrations of God's name and sexual immorality."

Two years ago, Thrasher, 57, came from the United States to Ein Kerem, the picturesque village in southwest Jerusalem, to become the executive director of the Bible Times Center and Heritage Garden, which she founded and built largely with her own savings.

…It is equally popular among evangelical Christians and Jews, Orthodox or secular. Perhaps surprisingly, a large number of "Christian Chinese Zionists"- as Thrasher calls them - visit the center, too, as well as some religious Muslims.

Singing, dancing and reveling in the fulfillment of years spent yearning for a return to Jerusalem, thousands of Ethiopians from all over the country descended on the capital's Haas promenade in Armon Hanatziv Thursday to celebrate Sigd, the annual Beta Israel festival commemorating the revelation on Mt. Sinai and the acceptance of the Torah.

…Still, as some measure of the Beta Israel's acceptance inside the Jewish State, this year's Sigd was the first to be recognized as a national holiday, after the Knesset added it to the list of official state holidays in July.

The Baha'i Temple in Haifa will soon undergo its first renovation since the building was completed in 1953. As a result, its famous gilded dome will be covered for almost two years.

The project includes reinforcement against earthquakes, replacing iron with steel, upgrading the electrical system and replacing the gilded panels of the dome.

Preparations began this week for the work, which is expected to take four years and cost an estimated NIS 25 million, covered entirely by Baha'i donors worldwide. The dome will be covered in the middle of next year.

Pelephone announced a new service last week, inviting subscribers toread the Koran on their cellphones. The service, which costs NIS 5.90 a month, comes on the heels of the cellular version of the Bible, which the company launched about six months ago.

For the first time in almost 40 years, not a single ultra-Orthodox party will be represented on the Jerusalem municipal coalition. Other religious parties, including the National Religious Party - National Union, have secured a seat, but none from the Haredi sector.

Incoming Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat will be sworn into office next week should he succeed in forming the municipal coalition before then.

The municipal coalition consists of 17 of the city's 31 council members, and will include five deputy chairs.

The mayor-elect's coalition will include 18 council members from seven lists: his Jerusalem Will Succeed party; the right-wing National Religious Party-National Union; the left-wing Meretz Party; Wake Up Jerusalem, a new party of twenty- and thirty-something secular and modern Orthodox residents; Yerushalayim Beitenu, a local offshoot of Avidgor Leiberman's Yisrael Beitenu; the one-person Likud list; and an independent list.

UTJ, which at eight seats is the largest party on the council, is demanding at least two deputymayoralappointments, while Barkat is ready to offer only one.

Shas, with four seats, is expected to be easier to placate. It is demanding one deputymayor and is likely to get it, but the party is said to be facing internal struggles.

Veteran Agudath Yisrael MK Mosher Gafne, of the Degel HaTorah faction, warns of the dire consequences that will result if unity is not achieved inside the party.

Q: Of late, we have seen physical and verbal violence in our camp. What is the solution?

A: Gafne:

To my joy, we are not a part of it but I do hope that Agudah will find a solution soon. After all, we are running together and if there is a faction not voting for us, we all lose. I spoke with both [UTJ MK Meir] Porush and [UTJ MK Ya’akov] Litzman and told them the very same thing.

The situation is absurd. The Torah world today is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. The economic crisis impacts all of us and we are busy with internal fighting. It is unbelievable.

Kadima Party chairwoman and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni discovered last week that her portrait had been expunged from dozens of Kadima's campaign billboards in Jerusalem.

The reason for this, her advisers explained to her, was the fact that the billboard company with rights for Jerusalem, Maximedia, forbids displaying pictures of women in the city for fear of offending ultra-Orthodox sensibilities.

Livni refused to toe the municipal line, and ordered her adviser, Reuven Adler, to replace the signs at once with signs that include her picture.

Wherever placing her picture should prove impossible, Livni ordered that her signs be removed altogether.

A group of ultra-Orthodox kindergarten teachers and assistants yesterday filed a suit against their employers, two ultra-Orthodox NGOs, for employing them under exploitative terms and forcing them to sign a wage agreement that violates basic workers' rights and laws.

The five plaintiffs are represented by the non-profit organization Itach Women Lawyers for Social Justice, which received complaints from 15 kindergarten teachers and assistants in the Sha'arei Zion and Harbatzat Torah kindergarten networks.

Tahon Ashkenazi says the employers also took advantage of the fact that the women were afraid of going to a secular court, which the agreement forbade. Instead it said they must take any issue up with an ultra-Orthodox arbitrator.

Many gedolim in the United States encourage newlyweds to make the move to learn in Yerushalayim and benefit from the kedusha the city has to offer.

There are a growing number of Americans found in the capital, in areas including Ramat Eshkol, Maalot Daphne, Sanhedria and Sanhedria Murchevet.

As is the case among all parents, Americans living in Yerushalayim seek out the best education for their children.

This is not exclusive to Yerushalayim, and not to the chareidi population, but our story deals with a particular school in the chareidi community, the Beis Yaakov Tzafon, the primary school serving the neighborhoods listed above, a member of the Chinuch Atzmai educational network.

The story begins three years ago in the Sanhedria Murchevet Beis Yaakov North, headed by Principal Frieda Sokolovsky.

For reasons that compel one to ponder, the children in first and second grades of American families have been targeted by Sokolovsky, who has blatantly implemented a discriminatory policy, segregating the American students along with a number of the weaker Sephardi girls, residents of the Shmuel HaNavi neighborhood.

The Jerusalem Municipality's legal advisor, Atty. Yossi Chavilio, is threatening for the first time to impose budget sanctions on the city's chareidi education system.

In a letter given last week to the head of the Unit for Chareidi Education, Rabbi Itamar Bar Ezer, Chavilio threatens to instruct the municipal treasurer to halt funding for the Bais Yaakov School in Ramot Alef if the girls using three classrooms at a nearby government religious school do not vacate the building within 14 days.

A large majority of Israeli public, and particularly non-religious Israelis, believe that the religious and ultra-Orthodox parties create an antagonism towards the Jewish religion, a new survey revealed Sunday.

While 77% of secular [Jews] stated that religious parties alienate the public, 62% of observant Jews, 89% of religious Jews and 93% of haredim claimed otherwise.

Gesher Institute Director Shoshi Becker:

"It's evident that secular Israelis would prefer seeing the religious MKs as part of the general, rather than sectoral parties."

The social face and the issue of Jewish identity that Habayit Hayehudi would like to put at the center of its agenda bring up names of a coloration different from that which has characterized the Knesset list until now.

Thus, for example, mention is being made of Dr. Aliza Lavie of Bar-Ilan University, a lecturer on communications, a researcher of Jewish women's writings and an activist in the Kolech group of Orthodox feminists; Yehiel Tropper, one of the founders of the Maagalei Tzedek social movement; Elhanan Glatt, the chief executive of the Bnai Akiva yeshivas and Liora Minka, the chairwoman of the Emunah national religious women's movement.

Just two weeks after the establishment of the new right wing party, Habayit Hayehudi ("the Jewish Home"), a crisis is looming over the decision of its public council not to hold a primary vote to elect its list of Knesset candidates.

Jerome A. Chanes is faculty scholar at Brandeis University’s Cohen Center, and is author of “A Dark Side of History: Antisemitism Through the Ages.”

Who killed Religious Zionism?

How did it happen that the moderate, centrist, responsible Mizrachi of the 1950s and 1960s, the Israeli political party of Zerach Warhaftig and Yosef Burg, was replaced by the Mafdal (National Religious Party — NRP) of Gush Emunim, the early radical precursor of today’s “settler movement?”

…The ultimate irony is that, in an era in which all of American Zionism is weak, it is precisely Religious Zionism, with its faith-based commitment to Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael, which is the one movement that could revitalize Zionism.

This will not happen unless there is the will to back to its roots of Klal Yisrael and of cultural and intellectual openness in addressing the complexities of the modern world and of contemporary Jewry.

The modern Orthodox public, for its part, defected to a plethora of secular parties, and thus effectively shunned not only political modern Orthodoxy's Greater Israeldogma, but also its fusion of synagogue and state. In fact, this is modern Orthodoxy's sweetest success.

Modern Orthodox Israelis, apparently some one-tenth of the Jewish population, are by now so naturally present in Israel's social and cultural fabric that they vote like everyone else.

Effectively, they are separating synagogue and state - working, studying, serving, enterprising and creating here like everyone else, and keeping all of that totally apart from their worship, which they increasingly consider a private affair, one which does not need the services of politicians, the presence of the state or the scrutiny of state-paid rabbis.

The Social Affairs Ministry will soon begin an experimental program for dealing with youth and adolescents alienated from national-religious mainstream society, in an effort to address the phenomenon of "hilltop youth."

The program will incorporate a religious lifestyle, and treatment will include assessments by psychologists and social workers, support groups as well as enrichment and leisure activities.

The Social Affairs Ministry has for several years operated dormitories and other frameworks for alienated youth from secular, ultra-Orthodox and Arab backgrounds, but the new program marks the first attempt to reach out to such youths from the national-religious community.

How do modern religious singles in their late twenties and thirties reconcile a faith that preaches abstinence until marriage with a burgeoninglibidothat has other plans?

Over a hundred Bar-IlanUniversitystudents, hoping to get some answers, attended a religious dating conference Tuesday evening that featured a liberal Orthodox rabbi, a femaleeducator who teaches Talmud to women, and the screenwriter of the popular TV seriesSrugim.

About a month ago, a yeshiva belonging to the religious-Zionist movement was established in the heart of Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood.

…An Israeli flag flies on the roof of the yeshiva, which is located at the end of Toulouse Street. Standing next to a rusting iron gate is the yeshiva's dean and founder, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali.

…Mali's words to his students reflect prolonged reevaluation by the religious-Zionist movement. The establishment of Torah-study groups in secular locales within the Green Line dates back to the start of settlement in the territories.

…The yeshiva is only one element in the new fabric of relations being woven between the national-religious public and the city of Jaffa.

In the past year, the Rosh Yehudi association, whose stated aim is "to deepen the Jewish identity of all sections of the population," established a yeshiva-style group in the Jaffa Dalet neighborhood.

The State Attorney's Office on Sunday ordered police to investigate the organizers of a gathering in honor of soldiers who refused orders to evict Jewish settlers from the wholesalemarket in Hebron and were jailed for their refusal.

During the gathering the soldiers received cash prizes.

The gathering was organized by a right-wing organization called Save the Land and the Nation (SOS) headed by Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe.

The public of haredi parents has yet to internalize the fact that when choosing to minimize the scope of secular studies in schools, they must at the same time be prepared to enable their child the option of a professional career, by saving money for academic studies.

One thing is certain – the position regarding secular studies is destined to change as the circle of haredi higher education grows wider.

The project, named Kiryas Yoel, was being built on Jerusalem's Raoul Wallenberg Street, on the plot where the city's Edison Cinema once stood.

The cornerstone-laying event was widelycovered by the mediaat the time, and was hailed as a major victory for Satmar Chasidim in their campaign to safeguard Jerusalem's sanctity from secular institutions.

One year later, however, the location remains an apparently abandoned construction site, with an enormous foundation pit lying bare with no workers or equipment in sight.

Reportsof a new chareidi daily in Eretz Yisrael appear to be gaining momentum as the buzz on the street indicates it may become a reality before Chanukah.

Meir Porush is behind the effort, and the timing is by no means an accident, hoping to bring the effort to fruition in time to carry the lists of the 18th Knesset lineup, with the deadline being 28-29 Kislev.

Intense work has been underway for months at the future site of the kosher power plant in Modi'in Illit.

Upon completion, the entire city will be connected to a power plant free of all concerns of chilul Shabbos, making it the first city ever powered entirely by electricity in accordance with the rulings of the Chazon Ishzt"l.

MK Avraham Ravitz, chairman of the Degel Hatorah faction within United Torah Judaism, has decided to retire at the end of the current Knesset term after 20 years in the parliament.

Ravitz, 74, informed the leaders of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox community, Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Aharon Leib Steinman, of his decision, but said he intends to continue as party head and serving the public.

A historic central Jerusalem military camp which was used by the IDF since the establishment of the State of Israel sixty years ago and dates back to the middle 19th century is being converted into a haredi residential complex, with the compound's historic Ottoman buildings to be preserved as public sites.

The land on the compound, which is located on the edge of the city's Mea Shearim neighborhood, was sold by the Defense Ministry to haredi entrepreneurs four years ago at over NIS 80 million for the construction of a 620-unit haredi residential complex…

Women who use amikve(ritual bath) normally have a religious experience, but in Hod Hasharon they will soon get a sublime one, reportswww.mynet.co.il.

The city is building a new, architect-designedmikvethataimsto create the atmosphere of a stylish spa, with Japanese-style furniture and fittings and ambient lighting.

According to the report, the chic 120-square-meter mikveh was designed by an architect under halachic supervision, and is expected to cost about NIS 1 million to build, with the funding to come from the Housing Ministry.

The city has issued tenders for building contractorsand expects the work to take about one year.

A municipal spokesman said it was hoped that the newmikvewould create a more pleasant experience for women using it, and would attract new users as well as those who regularly visitmikvaot.

Welfare Ministry's Deputy Director, MotiVinter said, however, that the fact that Israel has a rabbinical court system makes it different from other western countries and suggested that annulling the Tender Years Clause immediately would not be a good idea after all.

He recommended testing the idea in an experimental fashion before reaching a decision to strike the clause permanently from the law books.